Blind Slot Machine

Eric Fuller produced a bunch of these about 10 years ago… he’d intended to produce a slightly harder version of Stewart Coffin’s Slot Machine which ordinarily has a clear top to the box. That bit went as planned, but when it came to cutting the slot in the top of his boxes, he inadvertently cut them on the wrong side, so he ended up with a Reverse-Blind-Slot-Machine – although he settled on Blind Slot Machine in the end.

This design is a classic Coffin puzzle – it looks straight-forward: you have to put a series of polyominoes into the box through a slot in the top to make up a 3*3*3 cube inside the box. There are seven polyominoes and each of the pieces can fit through the slot(!). There are only so many ways to may up a cube from the pieces you’re given and the shape and position of the slot will dictate which pieces can go in last and in what orientation they would need to be in… which narrows things down quite a lot…

So pretty early on in the solving process you find yourself knowing exactly which assembly you’re targeting for the cube, which orientation it has to be in and which pieces are going in last – should be a doddle from there, eh?

Remember I said it was a classic Coffin puzzle?

Well, it is … which means that it’s anything but simple – even when you know EXACTLY what you’re trying to do… in fact in the beginning of the solution there is a sequence that is thoroughly mind-bending – so few combinations yet so thoroughly boggling! Several times I found myself going right back to basics, convinced I must have missed something somewhere because what I’m trying to do is quite simply impossible…

…and you’re doing everything by feel, remember? Feel and logic. Because there’s no little window to peer through and your finger is going to be jammed through that slot in the top of the box for quite a while…

Hugely satisfying solve when you finally manage to execute that tricky little bit – well worth putting all the remaining pieces in just so that you can say you have…

Steve Miller’s Nutty Bolt #1

A while back Steve teased us at an MPP with a set of Nutty Bolts he’d made up – ostensibly they all looked pretty similar (aside from their distinguishing colourful name tags) and the aim was the same for each of them: remove the trapped washer.

Flash forward many months and Steve had a batch of 30 of them available for sale, first at James’ PMPP earlier this year, and then on his website… I picked up a copy at James’ place and I’ve been meaning to write about it for a while now.

It’s great! Get one.

Feel free to carry on reading if you’re the deeply distrustful sort…

Steve’s plans for the series are to produce a set of virtually identical-looking bolts, all of them with a pair of nuts and a washer on them where the aim is to release the washer… all with different mechanisms to perplex puzzlists.

Nutty bolt #1 is one of the simpler designs he showed us at MPP but it’s a cracker – while there have been similar mechanisms on puzzle bolts in the past, Steve’s bolts are beautifully machined and they behave impeccably… there is zero chance of anything catching unexpectedly or the mechanism not working perfectly every time. You won’t need to bang it or encourage it to do its thing, but having said that, it’s a solid four inch bolt so it will take pretty much any sort of abuse you can throw at it. When he says that every bolt has been finished by hand, he means it, and he’s proud of his work!

Nutty Bolt #1 has a really elegant locking mechanism that rewards thought and a delicate examination.

Solve it and everything is open to examination – and I’m certain you’ll agree it’s been neatly done….

Steve’s first batch of 30 #1’s sold out fairly quickly, but if you drop him a line via his website, he’ll keep a list of folks who want one and chances are he’ll be making another batch or two in the future.

Any excuse!

…for a puzzle party…
 
A couple of months ago I became aware that my Irish puzzling mate, Jim Kerley, was going to be over in the UK for a week or so, and he was going to be based in a village less than an hour from my place – so I made the traditional South African offer of “come around for some burnt meat and some puzzling”. (OK, one of those probably isn’t a traditional South African offer…) 

We duly agreed on a suitable Saturday and invited a few other puzzlists around for the same – so last Saturday we had 10 for a braai and some puzzles, with Jim and Karen’s visit serving as a brilliant excuse! 

Shane arrived first, arm in a sling because he was (“allegedly”) catching a Pokemon with his phone when he tripped over something on a building site, having expected traffic and there wasn’t much at all. We’d just about caught up when Joe arrived from Wales-shire, shortly followed by Chris, so we settled down with a coffee and put the world to rights before a car-load arrived from London – Ali, Steve and Michael – so the serious puzzling could begin… and it did, until Jim and Karen arrived and there were introductions a-plenty.

Steve was quick to bring out some 3D-printed wares, including a lovely multi-coloured copy of Coffin’s 12-Piece Separation – neatly assembled – which he duly gave me … and then I did something VERY STUPID INDEED – I suggested that he take it apart and give me the pieces… he grimaced a little (having assembled the darn thing for me in the first place!) and proceeded to reduce it to a pile of similar looking sticks – mainly double-ended crochet-hooks in fact… watching him struggle to take it apart left me reconsidering my rashness – except that by then it was too late… the bag of pieces was duly passed around to several puzzlers with Chris spending quite a long time on it after I’d singularly failed to reassemble it. Chris, knowing that he could solve it, as he has a couple of copies at home, spent ages putting together several almost assemblies and eventually left me with a 10-Piece Separation and a couple of spare pieces. (It took me a good few hours on Sunday before it was finally fully back together again!)  

Steve had also brought along his copy of Brian Young’s latest sequential discovery odyssey, the SMS Box. My copy was also floating around and I watched in agony as both Chris and Ali duly made as much progress respectively as I have in the past month in less than an hour of playing around with them… which just goes to show quite how slow I am at solving these things! They had the good grace not to admit to any further progress beyond that stage at least… 

Jim had brought along several copies of his recent exchange puzzles as well as a number of other tray-packing puzzles produced on his trusty laser cutter. They were soon being passed around and enjoyed – even solved in some cases – before Jim announced that they were gifts for the good puzzlers who’d come along to make it a puzzle party – cue much thanks and even happier puzzlers!
At some point during the afternoon Gill pointed out that everyone was getting hungry so we fired up the Weber and began burning random cuts of meat, while Gill brought out several rounds of garlic bread to sustain folks while the braai-master did his thing. While the ritual burning was going on Adin and Sophie popped in on their way to a better/former (delete as appropriate) offer. We managed to keep them just long enough for a cuppa, but they were heading off to Oxford for another BBQ so we couldn’t tempt them to stay with offers of burnt meat… 

 With all the meat suitably cooked, we sat down to a pretty darn good lunch (even if I say so myself) under the shade of the gazebo on the deck (not often we get to say that in Blighty!) – and it was good. 

With the plates cleared from the table, the puzzles all miraculously reappeared and the puzzling restarted. 

With the return of the anti-social puzzling silence, the girls decided to wander up to the woods with the hound in tow and made the most of the lovely weather with a walk in the woods – muchly enjoyed by Ben of course!

Shane and Joe worked their way through my little Corian collection, with everyone in the know having great fun with Shane while he solved my copy of Hajek’s Matchbox – with plenty of “Oooh”s and “I can’t believe he would do that to someone else’s puzzle!” at the appropriate moments. 

Chris had brought along his copy of Cubloc and Ali spent a while getting it even further away from a solved position… until I explained how much “fun” I’d had with mine – firstly getting it apart (a major slog! From memory it’s about 49 moves for the first piece out!) and then trying to get it back together again – using BurrTools! This puzzle has a lot of pieces and I tried several unsuccessful strategies at finding a solution in BurrTools before I finally managed to come up with a cunning enough plan that my favourite software didn’t think was going to take months (or more!) to get through. Even then, the physical assembly is an absolute beast! Be warned…

When the girls got back from their walk we laid on some strawberries and ice cream with choccy sauce (brain food!) to top up the flagging energy levels – followed a while later with coffee and delicious cake from Mike… we did not go hungry! 

Michael kept us entertained with some wonderful Robert Reid stories (mental note: must pick up a copy of their book!) and he and Jim spent ages chatting about tilings and dissections. Somehow the conversation turned to laser-cutting and the noxious fumes that can be generated before Chris and Jim set about comparing sizes – Chris won hands-down, although, in fairness to Jim, he was competing with an entire university lab!  Things took a very surreal turn when Mike announced that igniting an acetone-drenched hand would leave you largely unharmed (or was it ether? – one of them was OK…), we didn’t feel the need to prove this, but it did provide a great excuse to trot out the story of Steve and the Austin Magic Pistol once more. 

It was late-afternoon before Jim and Karen had to leave to visit some nearby family connections – and early evening by the time the (relative) locals decided they needed to head homewards… a good day’s puzzling (&) banter!

Hales’ Turn the Plug

This one first showed up at an MPP quite a while ago and it amused many puzzlers that day… unfortunately one of them behaved in a totally inappropriate manner(!) and discovered a cooked solution that pretty much by-passed all of the cleverness… so Shane took it away and came up with an improved version, and duly presented me with a copy to add to my collection… Thanks!

Turn the Plug falls into Shane’s category of “Interval Puzzles” (like the “Wire cutter”) – which by his own description aren’t big and complicated enough to be included in his main puzzle series and are typically used to experiment with a particular idea or feature – although in my humble opinion (and that of several other puzzlers I know!) they’re plenty good enough as stand-alone puzzles!

Ostensibly Turn the Plug is a door lock mounted on a big old chunk of wood with a handy base so it stand upright. On the right hand side there’s a handy key … or at least it would have been handy if “someone” hadn’t screwed it firmly into said chunk of wood – and not provided any visible means of unscrewing it!

The rear of the puzzle reveals the aim, with a little indicator dial currently pointing to “Locked” with the puzzler being goaded into getting it to somehow point to “Open”.

Now it might not look like it, and Shane’s insistence on calling it an “interval” puzzle might lead you to believe otherwise, but this is a great little sequential discovery puzzle with a delightful discovery element to be, err, discovered.

Having discovered said thingy, finding how to use it effectively is 90% of the puzzle – let’s just say that Shane’s experience at locksmith mastery hasn’t gone to waste.

I love the fact that it all looks so simple and honest… when it’s anything but!

Nice job that man!